Colin Forbes: Double Jeopardy

Sunday May 24

After the murder it was assumed that Charles Warner – always so vigilant – had let down his guard because of the atmosphere. When he left the harbour at Lindau, Bavaria, and took his powerboat out on to Lake Konstanz it was a sunny, peaceful afternoon.

`And it was a diabolically clever and audacious killing,' Tweed commented to Martel two days later in London.

The powerboat, with Warner as its sole occupant, moved slowly as it passed through the harbour exit, flanked on one side by the stone statue of the Lion of Bavaria; on the other by the – towering lighthouse. Conforming to regulations, he sounded his hooter.

A lean, agile man of forty, Warner was wearing a German suit. On the seat beside him lay a Tyrolean hat. For his secret crossing to his landfall on the Swiss shore he had substituted a peaked, nautical cap which merged into the holiday scene.

There was nothing ahead of him on the huge lake to arouse suspicion. In the glare of the afternoon sun a fleet of yachts with coloured sails drifted like toys. Beyond rose the jagged, snowbound peaks of Liechtenstein and Switzerland. To his right one of the many white steamers which ply the lake disappeared towards the German town of Konstanz.

To his left a group of windsurfers was using the light breeze to skim over the glassy surface of the water. He counted six of them as they moved across his bows.

'Kindly get out of the Goddamn way,' he muttered as he throttled back his engine.

They were all young, fine physical specimens, clad only in bathing trunks as they propelled their strange craft in an enclosing arc. Two of them were blond. Warner was about half a mile from the shore when he realised they were playing games, circling round to stop him opening up the throttle. `Go and play elsewhere,' Warner growled.

He had a damned good mind to open up and scare them – but they were so close he might run them down. The tallest blond waved and brought his craft alongside the powerboat. He held the sail steady with his left hand while his right gripped the sheath knife strapped to his thigh. Too late a flicker of alarm alerted the Englishman. The windsurfer abandoned his sail and jumped into the powerboat. He wielded the blade with speed and lethal efficiency, plunging it into his victim at varying angles.

The other five windsurfers formed a screen of sails, masking the powerboat from anyone who might be watching them through glasses onshore. And the Wasserschutzpolizei – Water Police – had a unit and a launch at Lindau.

They maintained the screen while the tall blond completed his butchery. Then he left the powerboat, slipped into the water and upended his own sail. They resumed formation, heading for the deserted shore between Lindau and the Austrian border at the end of the lake.

`Multiple stab wounds – like the work of some maniac..

Sergeant Dorner of the Water Police stood up from his examination of the body in the drifting powerboat. He looked at the launch with Polizei painted in blue letters on the hull drawn up alongside. The youngest policeman aboard who had been watching the examination began to retch over the side. Baptism of fire, Dorner thought.

He frowned as he noticed something gleaming by his foot. When he picked it up and saw what he had found he slipped it quickly into his pocket. A triangular-shaped badge very like the Greek letter delta. He glanced down at the body again; it was a pretty grisly mess. He opened the passport extracted from the corpse's jacket together with a wallet.

`He's English. Funny, the wallet is stuffed with money…'

'Maybe those windsurfers panicked…' From his high point on the bridge of the launch, Busch, Dorner's deputy and the third man in the third man in the team, shielded his eyes and stared east. 'No sign of the bastards. They moved off fast…'

'It takes only seconds to snatch a man's wallet, Dorner persisted. 'This is the strangest killing I've come across… Christ!'

Sifting through the contents of the wallet he had found a small card made of plastic rather like a credit card. But this was no credit card Dorner thought grimly as he studied the green and red stripes, the embossed number – which identified the owner – and a five-letter code reference which meant London.

'What's the matter?' Busch called down.

Something in his chief's expression warned him they had found trouble. Dorner slipped the card back inside the wallet and beckoned Busch to leave the bridge and come close to the powerboat. He kept his voice low when Busch faced him over the narrow gap between the two vessels.

'This has to be kept quiet. First we inform the BND at Pullach immediately…'

'You mean he's…'

'I don't mean anything. But 1 think there are people in London who will want to know about this before nightfall…

Sergeant Dorner was very silent as he stood on the bridge of the police launch, leaving the handling of the vessel to his subordinate as they approached the harbour of Lindau. Attached by a strong rope, the powerboat with its ghastly cargo was being dragged at the stern, the body carefully concealed by a sheet of canvas.

It was the macabre condition of the corpse's back which worried Dorner, a fact he had not mentioned even to Busch. And the horror of what he had discovered seemed such an appalling contrast to the holiday atmosphere of Lindau where visitors strolled in the sun along the short harbour front.

Keep close watch for group six windsurfers possibly approaching your shore now. If seen apprehend and hold in close custody. Proceed on basis group armed and dangerous.

This was the top priority signal Dorner had told the young radio operator to send before they began the return trip to Lindau. By then the latest addition to his crew had fortunately recovered from his bout of vomiting. And the signal had been sent to police headquarters at Bregenz on the Austrian shore as well as to Dorner's home base.

`I thought 1 saw some weird markings carved on his back,' Busch remarked as he sounded the siren prior to entering the harbour. 'Almost like some kind of symbol – but there was so much blood…'

`Keep your mind on your job,' Dorner told him tensely.

With the sun blazing down on their necks they entered the small harbour and turned east to the landing-stage where the launch always berthed. Dorner was most concerned about how to smuggle the body the short distance from harbour to headquarters without anyone seeing it. He need not have worried. The early discovery of Charles Warner's body was already being observed.

The ancient town of Lindau with its medieval buildings, narrow, cobbled streets and even narrower alleys stands on an island at the eastern end of Lake Konstanz. There are two quite separate routes to reach this geographical oddity.

Coming by car you drive over the Seebrucke – the road bridge. Travelling to Lindau by international express from Zurich, you cross a rail embankment further west. The train stops at the Hauptbahnhof perched by the waterfront; it then moves back over the embankment and proceeds on to Munich.

The pavement artist was located outside the Bayerischer Hof, the most luxurious hotel on Lindau which faces the station exit. From here he could easily observe arrivals by train or boat.

A lean, bony-faced man in his early twenties, he wore a faded windcheater and jeans. The clothes were spotlessly clean. There are few beggars in Germany but those who exist preserve a respectable appearance. Only in this way can they hope to obtain money from passers-by.

His work was a picture of the Forum in Rome drawn in crayon on the stones of the sidewalk, a small cardboard box by its side for coins. At frequent intervals he paused while he walked up and down slowly, hands clasped behind his back.